Whether you loved or hatedEat, Pray Love the book, the trailer for the Julia Roberts movie raises the question of whether the book's charms can translate on film, or whether this just is a pretty person in pretty places.

Eat, Pray, Love is the best book you'll ever feel embarrassed buying, or embarrassed liking,…
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The trailer for the movie, out in August, features lush and beautiful landscapes, peopled by a wise Balinese man, a sad-looking Billy Crudup, a devoted James Franco, and a black best friend. But sorry, gang — Javier Bardem is in this movie too. Mm-hmm.

How, you wondered, could an author follow the smash finding-herself chartbuster Eat, Pray Love?…
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Elizabeth Gilbert is an easy target. Ever since Eat, Pray, Love, she's been a byword for a certain kind of navel-gazing modern entitlement that cherry-picks from cultures and spiritual traditions in a quest for self-fulfillment. Yet the phenomenal success of that book shows Gilbert was onto something — or at least that she's a likable enough writer that she can get away with a lot.

In the absence of the Gilbert's self-aware writing that charmed so many people, will this movie come off as even more privileged and self-indulgent than Gilbert's critics alleged her book was? Or is it enough — or maybe even more fun — to actually visit these places onscreen with some of Hollywood's most attractive stars? If anyone can convey charm, it's Julia Roberts.